The puppet’s journey from Turkey to the UK charmed audiences – but also discomfited them. And that’s the point This week, a 3.5-metre tall puppet called Little Amal landed at Folkestone. From there she is travelling to London, Coventry and finally Manchester. Since July she has taken an 8,000km journey through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France, following the route that a child migrant from Syria might. Her journey provides “an opportunity for people to be sympathetic and imagine what it would be like to be her”, David Lan, one of the project’s organisers, has said. As a piece of theatre Little Amal is an extraordinary thing: incredibly simple, almost naive in conception, and yet utterly epic in execution. Hers (somehow it is impossible to say “its”) has been a tremendous, and deeply touching, journey – an intervention in the long and difficult debate about refugees that powerfully foregrounds simple human empathy rather than policy points or dry arguments. Along the way she has been greeted joyfully by crowds, sent letters by Belgian school pupils, blessed by the pope and, on Sunday, will celebrate her birthday at the V&A in London with local children and a great deal of cake. But there has been a darker side, too: she has also been pelted with stones, protested against, and denied access to a village of Greek monasteries. Little Amal, as a work of art, has been welcomed by audiences, and delighted them. She has also discomfited them, even repulsed them. In other words, as Lan has pointed out, her presence has allowed a kind of re-enactment of the attitudes displayed to real refugees. Continue reading...
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